August 2016

Sep 30, 2011

At the 9/13 Council meeting, Trudy Wade wondered why the City pays so much to maintain Center City Park (starts around 1:07:40 here).

This week's Manager's report shows that it's expensive to maintain a large park or public garden, and that we pay much less to maintain Center City Park than we spend on, say, the Bicentennial Garden.

Wade also brought up the fact that the City doesn't own the park, as if that's a bad thing, but in reality Greensboro got a really nice park built for it at no cost to taxpayers (a discussion of the ownership meanders through the comments beneath this post).

People sure love to hate that park.

Report also says City employee count has lagged population growth over the past five years.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

That park is awful; a huge eyesore. And the crime...oh the crime. I liked it a lot better when it was a blighted lot. We need more blighted lots in Greensboro. That's why I've decided to "Go Forward" with Mayor Bill Knight.

Let's see, the property owners pay zero tax dollars on what is possibly the most valuable piece of property in all of Greensboro, the taxpayers pay to keep up the property and the property owners retain the right to sell it at a profit. Works for me.

And even if you stretch your imagination to the point where the non-profits that own the property somehow decide to sell it, the money would stay in the non-profit realm and GSO would have gotten a great park for all those years for the cost of maintenance.

"Billy, Murrow Boulevard, yeah, what is that about? I grew up here, too, and I've never understood where that road was supposed to go. There's nothing on the other side of that ramp but neighborhoods.
Posted by: michele | Jun 08, 2011 at 06:13 PM"

So funny, and true, now that I think about it. You feel like you're getting on the LA freeway, and then you're kind of back where you started from, semi-confused. I thought it was just me.

I think that when the hundreds of people who go to the park every day and when it is packed every weekend for some running event or charity event - that the last thing they care about is how it came to be. It is a civic space that is tremendously popular - perhaps even too popular. I would reckon that we desperately need more public green space downtown - more than we need a parking deck, unless of course the park is on top of the parking deck.

I'm not speaking on Ed's behalf, but I believe he did so because she asked the question at the meeting and the city manager answered her question in this week's memo. It does, however, make old Trudy look extremely ignorant and aloof, so I'll give you that much. Thanks for pointing that out, "bubba."

Ron wrote: "It has been suggested that Murrow Boulevard is a result of racism and serves as a "buffer" between east Greensboro and downtown."

The original intent of Murrow Blvd was an attempt to force the working class to leave South Greensboro to make way for the construction of a US 220 connector through downtown. The attack on East Greensboro was instituted with the deliberate widening of East Market Street wiping out the parking lots of a thriving mixed racial business community that was actively and successfully competing with downtown Greensboro.

Racism wasn't a factor in either as these were mixed, majority white working class communities at the time.

Ed, are you taking your meds? Daily? I said nothing about imaginary money. Perhaps you imagined I did?

If the long term intention was to allow the property to remain a park then the property would have been donated to the city with some sort of legally binding agreement that the property remains a park.

As Billy noted, Murrow was planned as a re-routing for US220. It ran as far as the money went but was never complete because such "spurs" fell out of favor with transportation road folks. Urban loops, instead of spurs, where determined as the most expedient way to move traffic.

It would be as if Painter Boulevard stopped, now, forever. The plans are all in place and some of it is built, but trends and priorities can change.

Murrow, as it ended up in limited form, has the effect of physically separating east and west Greensboro, but I truly don't think that was the intent of a federal project that doesn't generally undertake racial/political causes with roads. (Note, I said "normally")

I'll leave the economic discussion to others, because its way above my paygrade, but I do think that Center City Park is beautiful. I love to sit and watch the fountains, and watch all the little children running around and playing happily. The part is like a microcosm of our city. There's always such a diversity of people enjoying it. I just wish there was a park like that near my house, so I could walk there every day.

LOL to Brod's "commie plot" theory.

And one good thing about Murrow Boulevard is that it has lots of bridges, which are "home" to many homeless people. That's especially important since the homeless day center moved to Murrow and Washington. Very convenient!

Generous givers are easy to identify: the non-profits that bought the land and, with the help of private donors, built a great park for the people of Greensboro to enjoy, for which taxpayers pay what appears to be a reasonable maintenance fee.